Author Archives: borehead - Moderator
Mr. Robert Dixon of Tiverton, Rhode Island, has passed away
Mr. Robert Dixon, age 77, of Tiverton, Rhode Island, passed away on August 19, 2022. Robert was born in Fall River, MA to George and Edith Dixon of Riverside, RI. Robert was the husband of the late Mary McCarthy of Cranston, RI. Mr. Dixon graduated from East Providence High School in 1963. Robert retired from the United States Coast Guard in 1983 after serving 20 years. Mr. Dixon formed Commercial Marine Electronics to continue his passion of serving the marine industry by his expertise of the equipment and in the late 1980s became owner of Chris Electronics of New Bedford, MA. Robert’s knowledge and experience with repairing the marine electronics created a well-known reputation within the marine industry. >click to read<, 19:0z
Vermilion Bay shrimper says local shrimp industry is struggling, calls on lawmakers for solutions
“I’ve been commercially fishing since 1974, so it’s been a little over forty years I’ve been doing this,” said Thomas Olander. “I am a third generation, my father did it, my grandfather did it,” he said. “Hurricanes have been a big issue for us. The BP oil spill was a real big issue for us here.” “In 2022, we’re down to 4,000 commercial fishermen.” “We’re being overregulated, we’re paying way too much for fuel, and we’re getting the absolute worst price of my whole career doing this,” he added. According to Olander, the cause is imported shrimp, as imported shrimp floods the market and domestic shrimpers are getting a smaller share and getting squeezed out. Video, >click to read< 17:03
Chinese company First Catch builds advanced lobster storage at Halifax airport
If ever there was proof lobster is king of Nova Scotia seafood, it’s the new $36-million freight facility at Halifax Stanfield International Airport. The Air Cargo Logistics Park that opened earlier this month is a big bet that will continue. It’s doubling cold storage capacity and adding apron space to park five 747-sized cargo planes. “It increases the efficiency, the capacity and the ability to actually move and export more product from Nova Scotia,” said Marie Manning, Halifax International Airport Authority’s business development manager. “That benefits not only the airport, but certainly all of our stakeholders, the industry and the region itself. The economic impact is significant.” >click to read< 14:45
Decommissioning Irish Fishing Fleet Will Not Preserve Fish Stocks
Plans which will cut the Irish whitefish fleet by over 30% will not preserve fish stocks in Irish waters. That’s according to the Irish Fish Producers Organisation, who say European vessels will fish these stocks in our waters instead. The IFPO are responding to the €60m decommissioning scheme announced by the Minister for the Marine. IFPO chief executive, Aodh O Donnell, says the scheme must be accompanied by plans to develop and support a greener and more innovative Irish fishing industry. “Many fish producers are being forced to decommission because fuel costs mean they simply cannot afford to put to sea any longer. We estimate that around 60 whitefish vessels will be scrapped under decommissioning. This will create up to 500 permanent redundancies and directly impact on the livelihoods of up to 300 coastal community families. There will also be a knock-on effect on the marine services industry and the wider coastal economy.”>click to read< 13:30
Fishermen, Con Groups Appeal Nordic Aquafarms’ Environmental Report Certification
Two weeks after the Humboldt County Planning Commission certified the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for Nordic Aquafarms’ planned land-based fish factory on the Samoa Peninsula, the decision is being appealed to the Board of Supervisors. On Thursday, leaders of three local nonprofits, the Redwood Region Audubon Society Chapter, the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association and 350 Humboldt, submitted a letter to the supervisors and to John Ford, the county’s director of planning and building, initiating the appeal. The letter alleges that the environmental report, which was prepared for the county by local engineering firm GHD, violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by understating several of the project’s impacts, including its greenhouse gas emissions, its energy use and the threats it poses to commercial fisheries and coastal and bay ecosystems. >click to read< 11:44
TAC goes from 12,000 to10,000 tonnes – Reduction to herring quota will impact Maritimes, Quebec
The quota for major parts of the herring fishery in the Maritimes and Quebec is being reduced in an effort to increase the stock. The total allowable catch for herring in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence fishing zone, which includes parts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and all of Prince Edward Island, is being cut from 12,000 tonnes to 10,000 tonnes. The fall herring stock in the area remains in the “cautious zone,” according to a statement released Friday by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “The number of spawning adults is declining, and recruitment is at the lowest level ever observed,” DFO said. >click to read< 10:17
B.C. Commercial fishermen on tenterhooks
B.C. commercial fisherman, who had hoped for a green light today, now have to wait until next week for a go-ahead to fish for Fraser River sockeye, while American commercial fishermen are already catching sockeye. “They’re fishing on the American side, but we’re not fishing on the Canadian side,” said Mitch Dudoward, a commercial fisherman and spokesperson for the UFAWU-Unifor fishermen’s union. Returns so far appear to be healthy enough for a commercial opening this year, and fisherman had expected commercial openings to be announced today. But they now have to wait until Tuesday. >click to read< 9:16
Olde Bristol Days Returns from Virus Hiatus with the annual Merritt Brackett Lobster Boat Races
The 2022 festival officially opened Wednesday, Aug. 10 when the Bath Jazz Band played Pemaquid Beach Park. Clayton Bank and the Stoney Coast played The Harbor Room in New Harbor on Thursday, Aug. 11 and the Dukes of Windsor, formally known as the Pete Collins Jazz Band, played the park Friday night, Aug. 12. Saturday featured the Olde Bristol Days parade, kids games, vendors, music acts, food, and more at the beach park. Saturday night concluded with fireworks. On Sunday, Aug. 14, Olde Bristol Days concluded with the annual Merritt Brackett Lobster Boat Races, contested again off Fort William Henry. Photo gallery >click to read< 08:09
Delcambre Shrimp Festival
The town of Delcambre held its annual shrimp festival after nearly a two-year hiatus. This will be Delcambre’s 70th year hosting shrimp festival. Now the fall shrimp season began Monday off Louisiana’s coast. Though many in Delcambre are excited, they can finally feast on the pounds and pounds of shrimp that make its way through Delcambre for this festival. The event also helps celebrate the town’s shrimp industry, which employs many residents. In 1950 the first shrimp festival was held in Delcambre and has been a staple for the community ever since. >click to read< 18:16
Encouraging signs there will be plenty of ‘Brixham gold’ around
Traditionally, the summer is a quieter period for fishing and many boats will undertake their annual refits. These are now nearly all complete, and all the industry is gearing up for the busy season which will start in four to six weeks. The start of the busy period also coincides with the start of the cuttlefish season and this year there are encouraging signs that there is going to be plenty of ‘Brixham gold’ around. The cuttle is a particularly important fishery for Brixham as we can have somewhere in the region of £10,000,000 in total for a year across all the fishing vessels. >click to read< 14:33
After the storm: Survivor recounts Pelican Bay storm 50 years later
David Alan Shinkle vividly remembers the day he lost his grandfather. It was 50 years ago, on Aug. 16, 1972 – a day that would change the course of his life. It was the day a tragic storm took the lives of 13 fishermen in Pelican Bay. Shinkle, like many young men and women, had the pleasure of spending summers with his grandparents. He remembers beachcombing, shooting guns and just doing the things that young boys do. When he was a teenager, he started fishing with his grandfather Clayton Dooley. Dooley was captain of the “Dixie Lee,” a 35-foot diesel-powered trawler based out of Brookings. When he and his grandfather left the Brookings boat basin early the morning of the storm, the skies were overcast and it was lightly raining. 2 photos, >click to read< 12:08
FFAW-Unifor election ‘democratic farce’: SEA-NL
Seaward Enterprises Association of Newfoundland and Labrador (SEA-NL) calls the election process followed by the FFAW-Unifor to select a new secretary-treasurer a democratic farce, with thousands of members blocked from taking part in the vote. “The FFAW election is an attack on democracy in terms of a free, open, and transparent election given the absolute corruption of what should be the union’s prized democratic process,” says Merv Wiseman, a member of SEA-NL’s executive board with extensive experience in organizational governance. “The broader public should be concerned anytime we see democratic rights and freedoms usurped,” he added. >click to continue reading< 11:11
Bycatch stirs debate at fisheries roundtable
Hosted at Kenai Peninsula College by the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, the three-hour event brought together a who’s-who lineup of fisheries and policy experts from Alaska. That lineup included Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, who said Bering Sea trawling is not responsible for Alaska’s declining chinook salmon runs. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act defines bycatch as fish harvested in a fishery that are not sold or kept for personal use. The phrase is sometimes used generally to refer to the capture of fish that are not being targeted by a specific fishery that are discarded. >click to read< 09:59
Saturday service to remember those lost at sea
The annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service will take place on Saturday, Aug. 20, at the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial on Stacey Boulevard. Joe Parisi, a member of the Fishermen’s Memorial Service committee who will serve as the master of ceremonies, said the keynote speaker this year will be Peter Sinagra, the son of Capt. Carlo Sinagra, owner of the fishing vessel F/V Alligator, which was lost at sea in the fall of 1978. On Thursday, Sept. 28, 1978, Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard planes searched from Gloucester to Nova Scotia for the 52-foot Gloucester fishing vessel after the Alligator and its crew of three were reported overdue and failed to return as scheduled from what was to be a two-day trip to Seal Island, Nova Scotia. >click to read< 07:50
Lobster fishermen angry about low prices refuse to fish
About 250 southeastern New Brunswick lobster fishermen gathered outside the new Homarus Centre in Shediac on Thursday after refusing to fish. The fishermen say prices are 40 per cent lower than last year, when they were getting $7 for a pound of lobster. This season, they said, they’re getting $4.50 to $5 a pound, which they say isn’t profitable with the higher expenses they’ve faced because of inflation. Luc Leblanc, the spokesperson from the Maritime Fishermen’s Union said the gathering was peaceful. “The fishermen just wanted to let their feelings known and to make a little bit of a splash, which is what they did.” Geoff Irvine of the Lobster Council Canada said prices are declining because of consumer behaviour and market patterns. >click to read< 18:21
Oregon State Police conducts week-long ocean patrol
The entire OSP Marine Fisheries Team participated in a week long ocean enforcement effort aboard the Guardian, patrolling ports from Pacific City to the Oregon/California border. The enforcement focused on commercial and sport fisheries. Team members contacted a multitude of commercial vessels fishing for whiting, pink shrimp, sablefish, halibut and salmon. Two commercial troll salmon boats were cited for Commercial Troll Prohibited Method: more than four spreads per wire. One vessel had six spreads per wire and the other vessel had one wire with 10 spreads and another three with 6six spreads. 2 photos, >click to read< 16:15
P.E.I.’s fall lobster fishery coping with low prices and high costs
One week after the fall lobster season opened on Prince Edward Island, some fishers are worried. Prices are at least $2 to $3 less a pound than they were just a few months ago, in some cases as low as half of what they were in the spring lobster fishery. “The most common price in the last few days is in the $4.75 to $5 range,” said Charlie McGeoghegan, who chairs the Lobster P.E.I. board. McGeoghegan said the problem of low lobster prices is compounded by the high cost of putting a boat in the water these days. “The price of fuel hasn’t gone down much,,, Jerry Gavin, executive director of the P.E.I. Seafood Processors Association, says there’s still a lot of lobster meat in storage from the spring fishery. “There’s a lot of meat in inventory and that certainly wasn’t the case last year, so yes, it’s going to be a tougher fall for fishers. >click to read< 13:48
Set-netters’ case shot down, again, in court
And after the closure in 2019, set-netters represented by the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund sued the state in hopes the court would order managers to rework that management plan and others. It alleged restrictions the state had placed on the commercial fishermen were unscientific and arbitrary and flew in the face of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The Kenai court said because there was no federal management plan for Cook Inlet fisheries at that time, the state was not bound by those standards. And it said the state’s Board of Fisheries and Department of Fish and Game had the discretion to write and enforce their own rules. The Supreme Court doubled down on that opinion last week. >click to read< 12:04
Govt’s response to future of commercial fishing in NZ report released
“The report has already been influential in shaping this Government’s approach to oceans and fisheries management,” David Parker said. The report calls for immediate evidence-based action and identified the first steps to be taken towards some longer term recommendations. Significant action has already been taken by this Government that contribute towards a number of the recommendations. These include: Requiring cameras on up to 300 inshore commercial fishing vessels by 2024. This will cover up to 85 per cent of the total catch from inshore fisheries and focuses on those fisheries that pose the greatest risk to protected species. >click to read< 10:31
Winter Harbor hosts 58th annual Lobster Boat Race
Crowds gathered at the dock in Winter Harbor on Saturday for the start of the 58th annual lobster boat race hosted by the town. The races ran during the Winter Harbor Lobster Festival, which held a crafts fair at the fire station and lobster dinners at the Masonic Lodge. The Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Race is the first of the August races, followed by the Merritt Brackett race that took place in Pemaquid on Aug. 14, the Long Island race on Saturday, Aug. 20, and the MS Harborfest race in Portland on Sunday, Aug. 21. On Aug. 13, there were 29 races over the course of the day for different classes and categories of boats. Ninety-seven boats registered for the races, across all classes and categories, with several appearing in multiple races. This report includes race results, >click to read< 09:24
Nova Scotia: Indigenous lobster fishermen not required to observe whale closure
A Department of Fisheries and Oceans fishery closure in Nova Scotia this week to protect endangered North Atlantic Right Whales will not apply to Indigenous lobster fishermen in the area. The department is allowing ceremonial lobster fishing in St. Marys Bay to continue, raising concerns about conservation and fairness. All commercial crab and herring fisheries with unattended gear in the water are being ordered out of St. Marys Bay effective 5 p.m. on Thursday, which is standard practice after sightings. Dan Fleck of the Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association represents commercial fishermen in the area. He said he’s been getting calls from concerned fishermen this week. “I would expect that the rules would be applied fairly and equitably amongst all resource users,” Fleck said. >click to read< 08:01
State Supreme Court: Hawaii Longline Industry’s Use of Foreign Crews OK
A new Hawaii Supreme Court decision upholds the local longline fleet’s reliance on some 700 foreign fishermen who can’t legally leave the dock when their boats arrive in Honolulu Harbor. Specifically, the opinion, released Thursday, ruled that it’s OK for state officials to grant commercial licenses to those fishermen confined to the pier, even though they have no legal status in the U.S. It’s permissible, the court said, because Hawaii’s fleet of 140 or so longline vessels fish for ahi and other fresh seafood only in the deep ocean, not in the state-designated waters closer to shore. Meanwhile, the Hawaii Longline Association said it was pleased with the Supreme Court opinion. >click to read< 18:47
Innovative Fishing Vessel Launched in Turkey
Turkey’s Cemre Shipyard held a launch ceremony for the newbuild trawler Selvåg Senior being constructed for Norwegian owner Sørheim Holding. Developed in partnership with Skipsteknisk and Selvåg AS, the 79.5-meter-long Selvåg Senior purse seiner trawler will be the third in the world to use liquefied natural gas (LNG) fuel, after the Cemre-built Libas and Sunny Lady. Thanks to the LNG fuel system, the new trawler will adapt to the new “environmentally friendly” vessel flow by reducing carbon emissions being in accordance with IMO Tier III. Liquefied natural gas keeps a temperature of about -140°C to -160°C and must be heated to gas form to function as fuel. A cold recovery system will use the surplus energy from heating the gas to maintaining the refrigerated seawater (RSW) in the cargo tanks. >click to read< 17:25
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 40′ Peter Kass Wood Lobster Boat, 720HP Scania Diesel
To review specifications, information, and 16 photos’, >click here<, To see all the boats in this series >click here< 12:16
Sardine fisherman hopes changing consumer attitudes will get his catch on dinner plates
David Gray wants his fish on dinner plates. The Esperance commercial angler has spent years catching and selling sardines nationwide for bait. But a growing interest in locally sourced seafood has created new opportunities. He now has the human consumption market in his sights. The majority of Australia’s edible seafood is imported, predominantly from Asia. But Phil Clark, co-owner of WA company Fins Seafood, said supply headaches stemming from the pandemic had “put the magnifying glass” on where the country sourced its fish. >click to read< 11:13
Top Biden Climate Adviser Sanctioned by National Academy of Sciences for Ethical Violations
Jane Lubchenco, the deputy director for climate and environment at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, was sanctioned by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on August 8, Axios reported. Lubchenco’s sanction stemmed from a violation of the NAS’ code of conduct. Specifically, Lubchenco edited a paper that appeared in the NAS’ peer-reviewed journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in 2020; but the paper did not use the most recent available data, and Lubchenco had a personal relationship with one of the researchers in violation of the journal’s editorial policies. Axios adds that one of the researchers was Lubchenco’s brother-in-law. >click to read< 09:46
‘Deadliest Catch’ fleet witnesses unusual rocket launch: ‘Did Russia shoot a missile, dude?’
Captain Johnathon Hillstrand of the F/V Time Bandit was helping Captain Keith Colburn of the F/V Wizard fish the very edge of the U.S. fishing grounds. Prior to the alleged missile launch, the Wizard had a run-in with a Russian fishing vessel that was trawling in U.S. waters and endangering the Wizard’s fishing gear. The Time Bandit came to reinforce U.S. claim to the fishing grounds and encourage the Russian boat to stay in Russian waters. Soon after the trawler returned to Russian waters, the crew of the Time Bandit claimed a rocket was launched from Russia’s side of the border. Video, >click to read< 09:11
Lobster fishing is not profitable this year, fishermen explain
Rampant inflation and cooling markets are hitting Maritime lobster fishers hard. Six days after the start of fishing in the Northumberland Strait, some of them are receiving a price up to 40% lower than last year for their catch. A fishermen’s organization believes that this is not profitable. The atmosphere was not festive at the Cap-Pelé wharf on Tuesday afternoon. Fishermen have learned what price they will get for lobster this season: between $4.50 and $5 a pound. Last year at this time they were getting $7 a pound. We have prices, but it is not strong. They say it’s blocked everywhere, that lobster doesn’t sell, that’s the reason, explains Captain Guy Cormier. I take it one day at a time, we’re not dead today. >click to read< 07:50
Sunken fishing boat shifts into deeper water in Salish Sea leaking fuel in orca habitat
An update from the U.S. Coast Guard says the 15-metre F/V Aleutian Isle has shifted since it went down Saturday off Washington state, near San Juan Island, roughly 25 kilometres east of Victoria. The vessel, loaded with about 10,000 litres of diesel and oil, was originally resting in about 30 metres of water, but U.S. officials say it is now some 60 metres below the surface. The coast guard says the added depth presents more logistical challenges that the on-scene dive team is working to resolve. Divers are also trying to gather and remove a large fishing net that has floated free of the wreck and the Coast Guard update says officials are watching the area closely even though no marine mammals have been reported nearby. >click to read< 17:55
Maine Gubernatorial Candidates Publicly Oppose American Aquafarms Project
Earlier this month, Governor and gubernatorial candidate Janet Mills and former Governor and gubernatorial candidate Paul Lepage both indicated they do not support the American Aquafarms project which would have put 120 acres of net pen salmon at the foot of Acadia National Park. Republican candidate Paul LePage took to his Facebook page stating, “…I will oppose any future application from American Aquafarms in that location. The working ecosystem in Frenchman Bay is much too critical to place at risk for this proposed venture.” 2 press releases, >click to read< 15:16
